


Deserts

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Happy Ending, Loss, Past, Resolution, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 16:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21359380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: Chuck informs Sam and Dean after defeating them in battle that he's going to give them the ending they deserve.  Things aren't looking good.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2019





	Deserts

Who knew the apocalypse was going to be so ... tedious?

Dean had been standing in this line holding this empty plastic five-gallon gas can for two hours now. Sam had been in this same line yesterday in Baby for almost that long. Fortunately, he was waiting with her just around the corner so Dean wouldn’t have to lug the thing all the way back to the Bunker, but gas rationing meant the same person or car couldn’t come through the line more often than once a week, so here he was, in this long line of cars, sun beating down on his head, listening to the conversations between drivers who’d been sitting here long enough to start feeling like old pals.

“Bad idea,” Dean couldn’t help but mutter at the driver behind him who was telling the guy adjacent he was filling up so he could head for a bigger city--Chicago or Indianapolis--thinking surely they’d have better resources than ol’ Lebanon, Kansas.

“Excuse me?” the driver said, unaccountably hostile. Well, maybe not so unaccountable; Dean, the lone pedestrian in this line, wasn’t exactly fitting in.

“Nothing,” Dean said, waving him off.

“No, what? You got better ideas?”

He shouldn’t interfere. Shouldn’t try to help. He knew, absolutely, that he shouldn’t. But isn’t that what made a Winchester a Winchester? “Well ... kinda seems to me more people means more demand, so ... what makes you think things are better in big cities? I mean, where’s food come from? The writing’s on the wall: the survivors are going to be the ones who get out to the country and start raising their own food.”

The driver scoffed. “You expect me to be shoveling pigshit out of stables? Can you picture me in overalls and a big straw hat?” He and the driver behind him had a good laugh over that one. “Anyway, I don’t have that kind of money.”

He wasn’t going to need that kind of money soon, Dean thought, once the city populations started dying off. There wasn’t going to be anyone left to collect a mortgage.

Dean finally got to the front of the line, got his five gallons for a cool fifty bucks, then laboriously rolled it on its wobbly plastic wheels to where Sam waited in the fully packed car. He helped him put it in the spot they’d saved for it, got in, and gunned it out of Kansas for the second time, away from the only other place they’d gotten to call home for a while.

“So what’s Jody doing with Donna up in Nowhere, South Dakota?” Dean asked shortly.

“I don’t know. They’ve gathered a bunch of people together, they said, and they’re making a go of it. Preppers had already settled in the area, I guess, who’ve been expecting an apocalypse for decades now--”

“--There’s been people preparing for the end of the world for centuries,” Dean noted, fixing them sandwiches as Sam drove.

“Yeah. Well, they’re finally right. Anyway, they’ve already got some crops going, some farm animals. I guess Jody knew them from some run-ins they had with the government.”

“So they just invited their two closest cop friends to come live with them.”

There was a long silence as Dean finished making Sam’s sandwich and handed it to him, then dug into his own.

After Sam swallowed his first bite, he said quietly, “You think it’s a trap?”

“You heard what Chuck said: that he’d give us ‘the ending we deserve.’ Dying bloody in the middle of nowhere at the hands of our pretty much our only two friends left in the world--or at least, somebody who looks like them--sounds about right.”

“Do we have a choice?” Sam asked, so softly he almost couldn’t be heard. They’d discussed it, when Jody first called. Once it became clear the apocalypse was underway, they knew they had to do as Dean urged that driver to do and get out to the country--preferably the deep country, the farther away from any large cities, the better. Reports were already coming out about nearby farms being raided or taken over by desperate city-dwellers. Hunters often lived in the boonies, but just to avoid people, not because they wanted a country life. Sam and Dean were no exception. They didn’t know the first thing about farming, didn’t have any farmer friends; they had no experience and no options, no ‘in’ to that new lifestyle it seemed every surviving American would soon have to embrace ... until Jody called. “I mean, trap or no trap ... where else can we go?”

“We coulda stayed in the Bunker and lived off eighty-year-old rations a while.”

Instead, they’d given them to the local shelter as it filled up with hungry people and desperate families. “They would only have lasted a few years.”

“Yeah, and this apocalypse is supposed to last, what, a thousand?” 

Sam had been poring over the Book of Revelation and developing what he believed to be the timeline for the rest of humanity’s numbered days. “Well, Lucifer’s imprisoned. The signs are all coming to pass.” Rivers were running red, there were massive earthquakes and hailstones where these things didn't usually happen, the whole shebang. Scientists had explanations for all of it, but one way or another, they were all happening, explanation or no explanation. “Yeah, I think this is the start of the thousand years the Bible foretells before ....”

“Before we’re out of extra innings and it’s game over.”

Sam nodded. “Anyway, the Bunker ....”

“The Bunker was for when there was still something for us to fight. When we still had a chance to win.”

Sam didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. You don’t forget your last valiant stand against God--the battle you lost, immediately and totally.

That battle still haunted Sam, Dean was pretty sure, just as much as it still haunted Dean. How indeed--as Chuck so smugly asked--had they been arrogant enough to believe they could defeat God? “I MADE YOU!” he yelled. “This is MY story, that _I_ wrote! This isn’t even a battle, guys. It’s just the end of the story.” Then he muttered something about how it was high time to bring this one to an end and start a new one. “Something with aliens,” he mused. “Or maybe hijinks.” They were so powerless against him after he took that gun back from them, stealing it right out of their hands.

He waxed on about how fun it was to draw out the apocalypse, but the time had come for it to get fully underway. Then came that threat, plus a new, more ephemeral one: “The world has flouted my rules and wrecked everything freely for long enough. The time of reckoning has come. And before you start complaining that I should have given more warning, guys--IT’S ALL IN THE BIBLE! I gave Moses and John and Peter the WHOLE story, all my rules and warnings, what would happen if you all didn’t follow them, and what did you do? What was it?”

Even at such a moment as God declaring the end of all things to his face, Dean couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He felt like he was back in first grade, getting a lecture from a teacher.

“You broke EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!” They’d almost never seen Chuck angry before. At last Dean understood what they were referring to when they spoke of God’s wrath. “Repeatedly, and shamelessly! At this point, it’s like you forgot any of those things are even wrong! All you ever do is ... complain about unrequited love, or about how Starbucks made your drink wrong! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH HARDER LIFE CAN BE? Well, you’re about to find out.

“The children have got to be punished! And you--you two, Sam and Dean Winchester--must let it happen. You’ve spent your lives trying to protect people, and now you have to let whatever’s going to happen happen. No good can come from any interference on your part ever again. You hear me? Leave it alone! You’ve done enough. It’s time to stop thinking about other people and start thinking about yourselves. You’ll have enough to worry about, trust me.” Here a wicked smirk, like he was just dying to tell them the plot, but decided he should save it for them to figure out themselves as they lived it one agonizing event at a time.

There were more threats, including some descriptions of other apocalyptic horrors not included in the Bible (because he’d “gotten some new ideas since the rough draft”), culminating with this: “Stop fighting it. Stop fighting me. Your time for fighting is over.”

All of these words--including others that still made no sense to him--had been ringing in Dean’s head ever since. So far that threat about how any attempt to help would have bad results had come to pass in every case. All that food they gave to the local shelter--the shelter was overrun, angry and desperate people lining up, pounding on its doors and finally breaking them down. All the food was gone in a few hours. Even the guy behind him at the gas station had pointedly declared--making sure Dean heard him--that he would now definitely be going to the largest city he could find once his car was filled up. 

Dean didn’t know how Sam felt about all this, but for Dean, that was the worst part: to make it so the world was falling apart around them and they couldn’t do anything--anything at all--to fix it. Even the lady at the thrift store when they selected a few last things for their trip gave Sam a dirty look when he caught her toddler, preventing the kid from falling face-first into a clothing rack, snatching her away from him and hurrying to the far end of the store. Sam went on stoically, but Dean saw how it stung him, knew he remembered Chuck’s words--as if he could help it; they were reminded at every turn. They tried to resist, they really did, but _not helping_ just wasn’t in their skillset.

Still, they drove past all manner of horrors on their trip, recent attempts-to-help-gone-awry fresh in their minds, preventing them from stopping and inadvertently making everything worse: fist fights at the side of the road, cars broken down with their occupants sitting there weeping, bandits lying in wait (a flash of Dean’s gun convinced them to let the Impala pass without incident). There were a few things that made them feel a little better: people stopping to help people who were broken down; people joining together in caravans, sharing resources; people sharing what little food they had. Dean should be glad it wasn’t up to Sam and Dean to save everybody, but mostly what it left him with was an overwhelming feeling of uselessness. Helping people was what he had been, all he had done, all his life. If he couldn’t do it anymore ... what the hell good was he?

The fact was, they didn’t expect to have lasted this long. The first few days after that final battle and Chuck’s sinister promise, they expected to drop dead any second. But days had turned to weeks, and nothing much had changed in their daily lives, except prices going up everywhere and supply going down. When they agreed to accept Jody’s offer and head up to northern South Dakota, it was with the unspoken mutual understanding that they probably wouldn’t survive the 10-hour trip, but here they were, four hours into it, alive and well.

“We need gas,” Sam said. He pulled off the freeway, into a huge line of cars. Trying to get around them, he finally realized this _was_ the line for gas.

“We’ll be here all night,” Dean complained. 

“Literally,” Sam agreed. “This is the first exit with gas for forty miles. Let’s get to a bigger town and try there.”

They did, only there, cars were continually pulling in and out of empty gas stations, finding only “NO GAS” signs in all of them.

They got back on the highway, both now tense, and very concerned. Two exits later, at each of which they encountered some version of the same thing, they finally emptied their spare gas can into the tank, vowing to check each and every exit until they finally found something.

Instead, “NO GAS” signs were becoming more frequent, until they finally decided to pull into one of the massive lines, turn off the car, and push her forward as the line moved, in order to save what gas they had. An hour into this, an employee walked down the line of cars, holding a sign announcing they’d run out entirely and everyone should leave.

Getting back on the highway, driving past dozens stranded in that town, who’d completely run out while waiting in line, Dean said shortly, “D’you suppose Jody might be able to help? We’re still five hours away, but maybe things are better up there than down here. Anyway, we’re near her old stomping grounds; maybe she has a friend who’d do us a solid.”

Sam called, then called again, finally leaving her a message. “It went straight to voicemail.” Anyone who didn’t know him like Dean did would think he wasn’t the least bit troubled, but Dean knew it. He also knew that when even Sam was out of ideas, you were screwed.

They encountered their first bit of luck when they came across an abandoned car at the side of the road. A siphon hung out the gas tank, which they nabbed, then used on each successive abandoned car they encountered, sometimes getting lucky. They weren’t keen on stealing, but as Sam said, sooner or later, someone would get this gas--probably the thieves they were now seeing, selling obviously stolen gas at the side of the road for astronomical sums--and it might as well be Sam and Dean. In this fashion, they made their way into the mountains, where they stopped for the night.

“Figured we’d be there by this time,” Dean noted as he gathered food out of the cooler and Sam built a fire. They’d camped a thousand times in remote areas, yet never in their lives had they felt so completely alone in the wilderness, like there wasn’t a soul around for a hundred miles. “Thank God we brought extra food and water.”

Sam said only, “Not as much as we maybe should have.”

“Well, good thing there’s a stream right here,” Dean said briskly. “We’ll boil it now, let it cool overnight, and fill every jug we’ve got.” Water hadn’t been a problem yet, in almost any city; it hadn’t occurred to them they might run low.

“That’s what I mean: we should have brought more jugs. We can survive a while without food, but not water.”

“What we should have brought more of is gas.”

Sam nodded silently. Something was bothering him, beyond the obvious. Dean had hoped he could cajole him out of it with optimistic words, but when Sam got like this, there was nothing for it but to talk about it. Reluctantly, Dean prompted him. “What?”

Sam stared into the fire as the sky darkened. He was as troubled as Dean had ever seen him. “I’ve always been able to get a sense for what’s next, but right now ... I can’t. At all. I was just sure we’d ... beat Chuck.”

Dean looked away, frowning. “We lost that battle, but we’ll do what we’ve always done, regroup and come back fighting. There’s always the future.”

“Is there, Dean? He only lets us see him when he feels like it. Defeating Lucifer took every trick we had, every resource we could scrape up, and he was just an angel--created by God. If an angel is that powerful, how powerful is God?? If you think about it, every time we won against all odds .... I mean, he said himself he wrote our story, so when we won, maybe it was just because he wanted us to. So if he doesn’t want us to win now ....”

“We’re doomed, is that what you want me to say? We’re dead? This is how we’ve always done it: backs against the wall.”

“But before ... at least we had a chance.”

Dean flung the scraps of his meal into the fire and stood up, stalking back to the Impala to get his jacket; up here in the mountains, it was cold, even in June. He returned, pacing around in the ring of the fire’s light. “So what do you want me to do, roll over and die?”

“I just think we should be prepared ... for the worst.”

Dean set his jaw. He had to take a few deep breaths. He tried to keep the anger out of his voice, because Sam was right, this might be their last night together: the last time they camp, their last night sleeping under the stars, the last time they sit around a fire and talk with the brother who was their best--practically only--friend their whole lives. 

“Sam, from the time we went out on our first hunt, that’s how it could end, you know that. We’ve always gotten lucky, but there was bound to be one final time when we didn’t. Anyway, what do you want me to do, write a will? Everything I care about is in that car for the thieves to scavenge.” He glanced at the car, getting a pang. “I just hope they don’t--I just hope they’re good to Baby.”

Sam actually cracked a small smile.

“I’m serious! Chuck’s gonna do what Chuck’s gonna do, but if there’s any mercy in him, I hope he--I hope he finds someone good to take care of her next. Anyway, there’s no point dwelling on it--on any of it. You live, and you try to stay alive, fighting with everything you’ve got in you, until it’s all over. So that’s what I’m gonna do. You got any better ideas?”

“Yeah--I mean, no. Just--just if--if this is the end ... there’s some things I’ve gotta say.”

Dean scowled. “All right, fine, out with it. Is this about that Ninja Turtle I lost?”

Sam was instantly irritable. “You didn’t ‘lose’ it; you shot it across a canyon!”

“But it fit perfectly in the barrel! It’s just that--”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore, Dean!” Sam interrupted. “None of that matters! That’s not the kind of thing I meant. I feel like ... I feel like there’s so much to say, and if I never get the chance again, I don’t want to have any regrets. I hope you already know how I feel, but just in case, Dean, I mean ... I guess all I really want to say is you were the best brother anyone could ever have had. I wouldn’t change anything. Not even ... Ninja Turtles.” He squinted, getting mad again. “Okay, maybe just that one thing. You couldn’t have taken two minutes to look for something else??”

“I’m sorry about the Ninja Turtle, okay?” Dean growled, hoping Sam didn’t see his eyes welling up. He turned away from the fire to be sure. “I really am. I’m sorry about a lot of things. If I could take it all back now--” He got too choked up to continue. 

Then suddenly Sam was there in front of him, hugging him as hard as he ever had. Dean broke down weeping on Sam’s shoulder. Sam spoke in his even, gentle voice, his precious voice, that soon might be lost forever, like everything Dean had ever loved. “I know there’s been times when we wished it wasn’t all on us to be the saviors of the world, but even if I can’t see what’s coming, the past is crystal clear right now, and I’m glad it was you and me in this fight together. Even if we can’t beat Chuck, even if we can’t stop the apocalypse, we did a lot. We saved a lot of people, Dean. If I get to choose between trying and failing, and never trying at all, I sure as hell am glad I tried.”

Dean had been feeling it too, this end to all things. They’d heard a thousand monsters threaten a thousand things, so it wasn’t about what Chuck had said would happen now. It was about what Dean could feel, deep down in his bones, this sea change in the world. Sure, people were struggling, gas and food were low, the highways they spent their lives roaming weren’t as safe as they once were, but it wasn’t that. Something profound and fundamental had changed, and not just in the world: in Sam and Dean, too. Something had, undeniably, ended. The way their lives had gone, the way they’d always done things, had forever shifted. The most obvious meaning to these feelings was that their death was finally nigh, but even if it meant something else, was that a life he wanted to live, that he even _could_ live? Everything Sam was saying--Dean felt it too, a thousand-fold. If he couldn’t fight, if he couldn’t help people ... Chuck’s punishment was to be cruel indeed.

They woke in the morning, silently climbing to their feet and going about packing up as they’d done countless times in the past, the process so familiar that no words had to be said, both just doing what needed to be done, until the car was packed and there was nothing for it but to face this new day and whatever it might bring. Anyway, much had been said last night before they slept, and though sad and thoughtful, Dean thought they both felt an undeniable contentment, for things unspoken for a lifetime having finally been uttered.

“Never thought I’d be a real-life road warrior,” Dean remarked as they finished filling their jugs with boiled stream water and got in the car. “Spent my life on the road. It was always my friend.” He patted Baby’s steering wheel. “But damn if it doesn’t feel like the enemy right now. Guess they don’t call ’em the Badlands for nothing, eh, Sam?”

Dean tried to coast out of the mountains in neutral as much as possible, to conserve gas, grateful Sam knew better than to say anything about this being the worst time ever to own a gas-guzzler.

They saw a sign saying they were only about a hundred miles from their destination. Dean cheered, despite the fact that the gas gauge was below a quarter of a tank. Dean knew everything about Baby, and he knew she’d only be able to make it about halfway without a little more juice. “All right! Find a little more gas, then we’ll finally get to see Jody again. Won’t she be a sight for sore eyes.”

He really was feeling this upbeat and optimistic. Everything about their situation--especially as they got out on the open highway and bandits waiting like vultures at the side of the road for unlucky travelers to fall at their feet became a relatively common sight--would suggest there was no cause whatsoever to feel this way, but he did. A beautiful night under the stars, long-unspoken words he’d never forget, back in Baby on a hot summer day, windows all the way down ... he was alive. That was enough to be happy for.

As they got farther away from any major city, the bandit camps became more infrequent, and finally ceased altogether ... as did all traffic out here. Fifteen minutes went by, and Dean didn’t see a single other car. Every one he saw before that was headed in the other direction, toward civilization. “Hope we were right about getting out into the country, eh, Sam?” Dean joked nervously. “’Cause if we miscalculated ... we’re screwed eight ways from Sunday.”

“Everyone’s screwed no matter what they do,” Sam said, snacking on nuts. Dean held out his hand for a few. Sam obliged. “It’s the apocalypse. There are no good options.”

Dean glanced at Sam’s sardonic, matter-of-fact expression and burst out laughing. When was the last time Sam had been this devil-may-care? There was a hint of that reckless teenager peeking out of him again, from behind the careful, serious adult he’d become. Dean patted him roughly on the shoulder. “It takes an apocalypse to make you stop being so careful?”

Sam shrugged, starting to look downright ornery. “What’s the point of being careful? Everything’s already screwed. Anyway, this is where being careful got me.” He gestured at the empty land that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see.

Dean laughed, a full-throated guffaw. Sam started chuckling a little, too, then they were both laughing, harder and harder. Dean didn’t even know why; gallows humor, maybe. At the end of the world, everything was askew. What wasn’t funny was now, and vice versa. What was wrong before was right now, everything upside-down and topsy-turvy.

“That’s my little brother. Both barrels. We’ll go out like a coupla superheroes, just like we always planned. I mean, that was the endgame, right? We always knew, there’s no such thing as a happy ending for a hunter. Winning is never giving up, even when you know you’re beat. We’ll go out in a blaze of glory. We were goddamn heroes, Sam. We really were.”

Sam just nodded. “Damn right we were, Dean.”

Because it had become clear over the last thirty miles, there weren’t going to be any more cars to siphon gas from anymore. This was the end.

Baby ran out of gas by a church literally in the middle of nowhere. “Subtle, Chuck,” Dean growled as he made Sam help him push her behind the church, out of view of the road. 

“You know ... even if we make it, Dean, chances are we won’t have access to gas again for ... ever maybe, or at least for a long time.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean grunted, busily trying to cover her with a khaki tarp they weren’t planning on bringing with them: a little camouflage couldn’t hurt. “First chance I get, I’m coming back for ’er, even if I have to push her the whole way.”

Sam smiled indulgently, helped him with the tarp, then suggested they rest a bit in the shade of the church and have lunch while they let the sun sink a little lower before heading out. “We’ll probably be walking all night anyway,” he said. “No sense getting even more dehydrated than we already will, walking in the hottest part of the day.”

After lunch, they collected their supplies: nothing but food and water, mostly water, every bit of water they could carry without weighing themselves down so much it’d significantly slow their progress. “You never know what could happen,” Dean muttered. “Seems like if something can, it will. That’s Chuck’s style, I guess.”

“Or nothing at all.”

Yeah, or nothing at all. Dean could easily picture walking, walking eternally in this empty wasteland, never finding anything, until they finally fell from thirst and got picked apart by vultures.

They couldn’t stand to wait anymore, heading out around four in the afternoon. As Sam had done all along, he tried Jody again. Dean had gotten used to the rhythm of his messages, the litany of where they were coming from, where they were headed, the Cliff’s Notes of what had transpired since his last message, so much unsaid between the words. “... So, uh ... things are getting pretty desperate on our end; we’re hoping if you’re still out there, you might be able to help us out. I’m turning on my GPS ... just in case.” He paused a long moment, then in typically diffident Sam fashion, he ended with only, “Hope to see you soon.”

“Any ideas why she’s MIA?” Dean asked brusquely when Sam hung up. They’d tried Donna, too, of course, but it usually didn’t even ring, and never went to voicemail. 

Sam shrugged, obviously worried. “I doubt they have more than one or two cell towers in the area. Maybe one of them went down, or ... there’s all kinds of mechanical problems it could be.”

“So then she wouldn’t ever get our messages.”

“Probably not. But who knows; maybe she lost her charger, maybe they’re having electricity-supply problems; it could be anything.”

“So our new happy hippie commune is just down this road?”

“Well, uh ... Jody said she’d give us specific directions when we got closer. Said it’s tricky to find.”

Dean growled. “Of course.”

“But yeah, this is the general area.”

“It’s flat enough around here that hopefully we could see any kind of settlement from miles away.”

“Yeah.”

As the silence lengthened, Dean decided to fill it with more cheerful thoughts than the ones that were currently circling around in their heads. “Sure didn’t ever picture us putting on straw hats and coveralls and ... whatever it is farmers do. Shoveling shit. Milking things.”

Sam huffed a laugh. “Me, either.”

“Don’t really relish a communal living situation, either. Especially with a bunch of rednecks.”

“Yeah, well ... I guess when times get desperate, you do what you have to. Seems like there’s enough land around here that we can maybe get our own spot with a little privacy.”

Dean shook his head, already hating the thought of all of it. “I guess we jumped at our only chance when it came along, but ... this is gonna suck.”

Sam evidently couldn’t disagree. “Things might get better. They might get food and gas supplies running again. We still don’t know ... exactly how Chuck pictured these last thousand years going. Maybe ....”

“... Maybe he won’t be as much of a dick about it as he could be?”

“Yeah.”

The more Dean thought about it, the less he liked it. “Man, our whole lives revolved around everything Chuck’s taking away! Fast food, travel, gas, hotels .... Remember when we were the only guys on the road packing? Soon everybody’s gonna be armed. You won’t be able to get anywhere without a firefight. This is bullshit!” Chuck really had screwed them over but good. “He thought of everything!”

Now it was Sam trying to turn their thoughts in more cheerful directions. “Let’s just keep on walking. Once we get there, we can see what’s what. Maybe more options will open up. Maybe we can create more options, just like we’ve always done.”

“How, Sam? How??”

“I hear they have horses. Maybe they’d let us buy a couple and we could go try to find ... something else.”

“There is nothing else,” Dean growled. “Look around. This is as good as it gets. Everything else is what’s behind us: people fighting, people stealing, people stranded, people starving. This is all there is left. Son of a bitch.”

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any part of it. Baby, stuck back there in the middle of nowhere, full of every material object Dean cherished? Even if they somehow made it to Jody, Baby would probably be looted by the time he was able to get back to her, or maybe stolen. The sun was blazing hot, the green grass stretching out in every direction, horizon to horizon, nothing else to see, nothing to do. No more movies on a hot afternoon like this, sitting in the theater in the air conditioning. No more late nights at the bar, picking up girls. No more hunting trips, just him and Sam and Baby and the open road, free to do and say and live however the hell they wanted. The word apocalypse had been thrown around for so long by so many people in their lives that it had become simply an idea, of suffering and loss and devastation, but it was personal now; an apocalypse in the world, and a simultaneous, personal apocalypse, watching the life he’d known and loved vaporize before his very eyes.

When he looked up at Sam, he could see on his face that he was having the same thoughts at the same moment. Dean had never seen him look so grim.

“Well, what can we do, huh?” Dean managed to grunt. “But keep on going.”

“It’s just that ... Chuck created this world. You know the Book of Jonah? There’s this part Chuck paraphrased at us during that last battle: ‘I can make a vine grow to shelter you, and I can make it wither.’”

“Yeah, well, he did.”

“Yeah. He did.”

No vines were growing out here, just the blazing hot sun, that set ridiculously late, up here in the north, and in these longest days of the year. No trees, no houses, no shelter of any kind. Their water was getting depleted at an alarming rate. They paused for dinner, then simply kept on walking. Sam tried Jody one more time, but after that, he couldn’t afford to; the battery was starting to run low. Dean turned on his fully charged phone now, as they’d planned, and also turned on his GPS, texting Jody to this effect, just in case somehow she’d lost his number.

They walked all night into the morning, at last taking shelter in the shade of the one structure they’d seen in all this time: a small, ramshackle barn.

“Is there any chance we could have walked right past their settlement in the dark?” Dean asked, already knowing the answer. The one stroke of luck this whole trip was that it was a full moon, brightly illuminating every hillock and blade of grass. They’d certainly have seen anything that looked human-made, and if they had even one light on out there, it would have shone out to Sam and Dean like a beacon, no matter how far off the road it was.

“We should have been there by now,” Sam muttered.

“Well, we better get there soon, or we’re crow food.”

Sam hesitated a moment, looking at their meager remaining water. Dean realized he was calculating: better to keep walking in the hot sun while they had some water left, or better to wait in the shade until it cooled off? Dean had his answer when Sam got up, game face on. “Okay,” he said briskly.

There had been conversation through the night, mostly reminiscences, of their greatest hunts, their closest calls. Toward the end of the night, they even ranged into talk of old friends long dead, too tired to realize at first that this was not the way to keep their spirits up. By the time meadow birds started heralding the dawn, Dean felt like he’d lived--relived--a lifetime, his own lifetime, and what a story it was. 

Things weren’t looking good for them, but after sharing their memoirs aloud like that, he felt a little more able to face what seemed inevitable now. Intense fatigue also dulled what otherwise would have been an acute awareness of the desperation of their circumstance. Now they were silent, putting one foot laboriously in front of the other, hoping with each step to see something appear on the horizon, always disappointed.

Sam was the first to fall. Dean blinked, his comprehension too dimmed by sleep-deprivation, and now-serious dehydration, to understand what he was seeing. Had Sam tripped? Dean hauled him to his feet. Sam shook his head, tried to shake it off, apologized, and kept on walking, then Dean followed--or tried to follow; at first, his feet simply didn’t move, until he forced one foot to take a step, then the other, and they reluctantly returned to the same endless trudging they’d been engaged in for over twenty-four hours now.

When Dean went down, he went down hard, and yet, the grass felt like the coolest, sweetest, softest thing he’d ever felt, the perfect bed in which to roll over and slumber. Sam didn’t realize what had happened, and continued on, very slowly, as Dean watched blearily. Had they really been walking that slowly? No wonder they couldn’t get anywhere. 

Dean smiled to watch his brother literally walk off into the sunset. Sammy. He was more cut out for a farm life than Dean would ever be. Maybe he and Jody would get married. Or, wait, was one of Sam’s old paramours there? They were all there! Everyone they’d ever loved! Jo, and Bobby, and Dad. Man, if only Dean could get there, too! But at least if Sammy could make it, that was something.

Then Sam turned around, coming back for Dean. “No,” Dean croaked, but he wasn’t sure if it made a sound. “No, you idiot, keep going.” 

Sam finally reached his side, leaned down to haul him to his feet as Dean had done for him before. Instead, swaying, Sam thudded down next to Dean, a terrible, heavy sound. 

“Sam? You all right? Sammy??” 

He reached frantically for Sam, and, finding his hand, grasped tight, relieved beyond expression when he felt Sam’s hand weakly respond in kind. “It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean whispered, “your big brother’s here. I’m here. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

“Well, lookit that, Sleeping Beauty finally awakens.” Dean had to blink several times before he could see anything at all, then he had to wipe sticky goo out of his eyes before seeing clearly: Jody, smirking at him. “Thought I might have a Rip Van Winkle here.”

Dean tried to sit up, but gratefully remained as he was, in a fantastically comfortable bed somewhere, as Jody unceremoniously pushed him down again. Where was he? He looked around, and suddenly became frantic. “Sam--”

“He’s fine,” Jody said in her wonderfully calming, matter-of-fact way. “He’s been up for an hour or so. He’s in the kitchen helping make lunch.”

“Kitchen ...?” He looked around. Nothing looked familiar about the homey room with white linens and simple white curtains blowing in a gentle breeze by the wide-open window next to the bed. “Did we find you?”

“More or less. When we finally got the electricity up and running again, I got your messages, found you on the GPS, and we got a couple of horses and got you boys home.” She got quiet. “When we saw you both lying there by the side of the road ... I was afraid we were too late. I thought maybe the end had come for the Great Winchesters.” She knew all about their battle with Chuck, and his dire threats for their future. “Thank god ... thank god we were in time.” Her eyes got a little wet. She put her hand over Dean’s. She looked far away for a bit, before her dark expression eased. “But a little rest and a whole lot of water and you both perked right up, just like daisies.” She gave him an impish grin he couldn’t help but return.

“Water’s good, but what I could really use some of right now is food.”

As if she’d been anticipating these very words, she turned around, picked up a plate on a table behind her, and handed it to him. He stared at it in disbelief for what must have been a long time, since Jody finally teased, “Waffles. Remember waffles? You pick a corner to start on ....”

Was this some kind of dream? Or had he really died and gone to Heaven? A Heaven where you casually mention you might be a bit peckish and someone hands you three huge waffles, topped generously with thick whipped cream and a ton of sliced strawberries?? “Sam was ravenous when he finally woke up. I wish ... I still wish we’d found you boys a little sooner.”

“Hey, all’s well that ends well, right? I’m okay. We’re okay. Just ... thanks for having us. I mean, thank god you invited us up here, because out there ... things are bad. Really bad.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” she said shortly. 

“So ... why did you decide to move up here to Ruby Ridge, anyway? Weren’t you trying to draw a thin blue line around this place a few months ago?”

“Sure, I investigated claims they were stockpiling weapons, didn’t find anything I wouldn’t find in the trunk of your car,” she said pointedly, “and I went back home. It’s them who extended an invitation when all, uh ... ‘heaven’ broke loose, though. They’re good people, Dean. As soon as you’re up for it, you’ll get to meet ’em. You’ll see.” 

But first, waffles. As soon as the first bite hit his tongue, he groaned ecstatically, carving off a second, much larger bite immediately, groaning even louder with this one. Jody chuckled, getting a little uncomfortable: “Guess I better leave you two alone.”

“Wait,” he said, making her wait until he’d finished savoring every delectable flavor of this second of so many glorious mouthfuls. “Wait. This is how you eat out here?? I pictured ... you know, gruel, lots of beans, salads.”

“Oh, we have beans and salads, too, although I’m not sure how you make gruel, and I’m not keen to find out ....”

“But where’d you get the whipped cream??”

“From our cows, Dean,” she said, looking like she thought he might still be delirious. “The honey from our honeybees. The strawberries from the garden. The flour came from the store, though. Next year, if our wheat crop does all right, it’ll be whole-wheat waffles, but everything else’ll be the same. The store isn’t the only place you can get something that tastes halfway decent, you know.”

“I know it now,” he said wonderingly, diving back into the platter. Jody did indeed leave him alone with them, once it became clear they were taking up about 97% of his attention.

By the time he was done with the waffles, he’d half decided he really had died and gone to Heaven. It was a little hot for Heaven--not super hot, but with only the summer breeze to cool the room, a bit on the warm side--but if it was a trick of Chuck’s, lulling him into a sense of security with waffles was a good ploy, so as soon as he was able to stand without swaying, he went out of the room to investigate.

He found Sam in the kitchen of a large house with a bunch of ladies, including Donna. “Dean Winchester!” she cried with that sunny grin, and kissed his cheek. He hugged her back happily. Man, after that terrible battle with Chuck and that harrowing journey, after being certain it was finally the end, it sure felt good to be among friends. Dean was introduced to the other women, catching Sam’s eye above their heads to see what his take on the situation was. Sam just nodded, that way he did when he believed that all was good.

Dean took them up on their offer to help them shell peas, because he had to sit down again. As he engaged in the pleasant-enough task while a thirteen-year-old girl gave him pointers and then turned bright red, suddenly shy with him, he tried to think back on the last time he’d been able to just sit down and relax in peace and safety instead of having to fight for his life when he was in no condition to do so, and could hardly think of a time.

He didn’t even have to get up for lunch; someone went out and retrieved people from the fields, who came in and joined him at the table. Dean met the rest of them, about forty all told, many of whom only nodded to him and went outside to eat, since there wasn’t enough room for more than twenty at the big table. Claire and Alex were there, of course--and it was great to see them, too. Dad taught them that when you were the people’s protector, you didn’t also get to be their friend. Dad’s only friends were other hunters--and in a lot of cases, calling them ‘friends’ was a stretch. When Dean and Sam were hunting, civilians generally only got in the way. They’d gotten used to being alone. Dean had thought he’d be able to go it alone for his whole life, and that he’d have to, and he thought he liked it like that. So he was surprised by how good, how warm it felt, to be surrounded by friends and friends of friends, as he listened to even suspicious Claire and remote Alex chatting with these people like ... like they really liked them. Trusted them.

Claire seemed to suddenly remember something right then and looked at Dean. “Oh, by the way, there’s some other hunte--uh, other people you know, who we invited. And people you’ve ... helped. All kinds of people, including some people you’ve probably forgotten all about, but they haven’t forgotten about you, and they’re coming.”

Dean scowled, and it wasn’t just Claire who seemed surprised by this reaction--everyone nearby seemed surprised. Someone started saying something about how everyone was welcome and they meant to save everyone they could by inviting them. Dean interrupted, “How’d you find these ‘people’?” Dammit, it _was_ another of Chuck’s tricks! Everything was just way too good--the food, the company, and now this?? It was a freakin’ dream come true. Dean met Sam’s eyes, to find even Sam seeming surprised by his reaction.

It was Alex who answered, undaunted by Dean’s gruff tone, although the sesame seeds sticking to her lip compromised her usual cool veneer a little. “The internet,” she said, dipping a fry in some thick ketchup, which Dean zeroed in on now--WERE THE FRIES HOMEMADE, TOO?? What the--Chuck hadn’t bothered to make this illusion realistic at all--this was all _way_ too good to be true. This was like the djinn all over again, except this time, he got to keep Sam. 

Claire expanded on this cryptic statement: “That friend of yours Charlie did a lot of research on you guys actually before she died--and on us. I guess she must have decided we were cool, because we got some kind of auto-email from her about a year ago, a ‘if you’re receiving this, I must be dead’ thing. It had a lot of stuff in there, including contact info on a ton of people you guys have known over the years.”

Dean couldn’t speak for a long few seconds over the clench in his gut he still got, remembering Charlie and how she died--and now this news, about her looking out for them even from the beyond.

“Sounds like Charlie,” Sam murmured softly, also plainly struck by the information.

“It was titled, like ... ‘Friends of the Winchesters,’ or something, something about how you losers need friends,” Claire went on. 

Dean scowled deeper. “Chuck,” he muttered under his breath as conversation went on in another part of the table about auto-emails and how nice it would be to receive something like that, how maybe if they could get the internet working more consistently out here, they could enlist some new arrival who was good at internet research to help them find more of their friends’ contact information, “this is pretty good, I’ll give you that, you son of a bitch, but if you really wanted it to be perfect, Charlie’d still be alive, she’d be coming around the corner and telling us she faked her death right this second.” He kept his head down, hoping maybe Chuck would deliver. Then Dean could be sure this was all a trick, because somehow, despite how fantastic everything was, he couldn’t be. The ugly tablecloth (actually several unmatching cloths laid over different sections of the very long table), the little kid with the incredibly annoying voice at the far end, and the myriad aches and pains in every part and system of Dean’s body--the consequences of life-threatening dehydration, presumably--none of these would be present in some djinn fantasy. 

“So, anyway,” Claire said with that bored tone she affected when she was feeling a lot, “we contacted them all and invited them, and they’re coming. So even you dweebs’ll have some friends here soon,” she teased. “I mean, besides yours truly.” 

Sam actually seemed glad, but even these incredible burgers and homemade fries now tasted like ashes in Dean’s mouth.

After lunch, Alex showed them to an empty cabin. It was pretty small, but homey, with more simple curtains, and two twin beds. “We’ve gotta get outta here,” Dean growled as soon as Alex was gone.

Sam was clearly startled. “... Why? Despite that there’s nowhere else to go ... everything seems pretty okay here. Don’t you think?”

“You don’t see it?? Sam, this is a trick, some trick of Chuck’s! I don’t know if we’re trapped in Heaven or what, but--”

Sam huffed a sharp laugh. “This isn’t Heaven,” he said flatly.

“Are you kidding me?? Waffles? Burgers?? Homemade fries???”

“So it’s just the ... food?” Sam asked disbelievingly. He got that look he got, when he was laughing at Dean inside, but didn’t want to get yelled at for it.

Dean scowled, embarrassed. “And all our friends coming, don’t forget that. Why? What makes you so sure this isn’t Heaven?”

“Well, for one thing, I can’t stand up for more than about fifteen minutes at a time.”

So it wasn’t just Dean who was feeling the aftereffects of almost dying. “Okay, but ....”

“If this was Heaven, don’t you think they’d at least have air conditioning? Electricity? Toilet paper?”

Dean blanched. He almost couldn’t get the words out. “They--they don’t have toilet paper??”

“No. They ran out a week ago.”

“What--then what--?”

“They have a couple of cold-water bidets, but otherwise, Jody encouraged me to pick some weeds on my way to the john. You know, just not poison ivy.”

Dean’s voice still quavered. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Anyway, we’re not reliving happy times from the past; everything about this is all new, to both of us.”

“Maybe it’s a trick.”

“Maybe so, but if it is, we’re still alive, on Earth, and the apocalypse is still happening. I mean, Dean, if this was some happy illusion Chuck created for us, would people be out there, dying by the millions? I was able to access the internet a little today. That’s the current estimate of the death toll, and the bad part hasn’t even really started yet, the serious famine, the plagues.”

Dean finally sat down on one of the beds. “So what’re we gonna do about it?”

“What _can_ we do about it? We barely made it here, and now there’s no way out. There’s no gas.”

Dean lay back on the bed. Sam was right. This couldn’t be Heaven, not if Baby was grounded. And not even nearby and safe! Maybe already stolen or stripped. He winced at the thought.

The air blowing in through the open window (with only a couple of bugs--no screens, either--definitely not Heaven) was fresh and almost cool. It carried all kinds of interesting, earthy, sweet aromas, maybe herbs or flowers; Dean had seen a few flowers they’d planted. Dean could hear people talking outside, chuckling together, working. The sky was the gentlest blue. How could the apocalypse be happening out there, not so far away, if here, everything was so serene and lovely? 

Chuck’s words echoed in his mind: “No good can come from any interference on your part ever again.” He’d seen how true this was, time and again, yet still, even now, all he wanted was to get out there and save everybody. Two men alone--two men and two women, since of course Jody and Donna would help them, if they asked--or, for that matter, not even forty men and women and children--could save millions. Billions. Forty men and women and children were trying to save a few dozen, maybe a couple hundred, and looking at the resources they had ... that was all they could do. If that was all all those people could do ... what could Sam and Dean do? They’d already done everything in their power ... and it hadn’t been enough.

“How do we live, knowing what’s going on out there?” Dean asked Sam quietly, as Sam got on the other bed and scootched back so he could lean against the wall. His big, gangly legs were still hanging over the opposite edge. “Even if these people are all right and we manage to survive out here ... how can we just sit here and not try to help?”

Sam was quiet a long minute. They could hear people working in the fields, talking, laughing, getting to know each other. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the things Chuck said to us.”

“Well, yeah.”

“It seemed pretty clear he’s not going to let us fight him again, even if we ... even if there was some way to win.”

Even though he must have slept almost a full day, Dean felt himself growing sleepy again, lulled by the peaceful sounds, of work and wind and weather, cows lowing, birds singing.

“But all he said was that our time for fighting is over, so maybe there’s someone else out there whose time is just beginning, but even if not, I guess if it was Chuck’s story to tell, I mean ... every story has to end.”

“With the deaths of billions of people, Sammy??”

“We all die someday, Dean. And with Hell’s gates closed, I guess they must all be going to Heaven. I don’t like it either,” Sam interrupted Dean about to say the same thing. “It’s the hardest thing for a Winchester, to sit here and not try to fix it. Fix everything. But there’s nothing we can do right now. The best we can do is survive another day, and another, until maybe we get another chance. You know?”

“They were helping each other. On the highways. Did you see that? And here, they’re doing it here, too.”

“Yeah. Chuck seemed to think there comes a time when you stop running to everybody’s rescue and let them face their own consequences, and maybe that’s okay.”

“‘Okay’? What’s that?” He was only partly joking. “Since I was four years old, I don’t think I’ve ever known a time when everything was ‘okay.’ I don’t think I’d recognize it if it walked up and punched me in the junk.”

Sam made that little face. “Vivid.”

There was a brief lull, neither of them saying anything. Sam sighed. He must still be tired, too.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re all right, though? I watched you go down, man. I thought ... I really thought I’d never see you get back up again.”

“I’m okay.”

“All right. Well, that’s somethin’.”

Dean woke with a start after dark. Sam seemed to have passed out around the same time as him, his legs still dangling off the edge of the bed, but now slumped over onto his side. After gulping down water from the spigot in the cabin’s tiny bathroom, Dean made his way to the main cabin again to try to scrounge up some dinner for him and Sam, sure Sam would be as ravenous when he woke up as Dean was.

Apparently they’d missed dinner; everyone was gone except one older guy who seemed to be regarded as one of the leaders here, along with Jody and Donna, whose name was Richard. Richard put together a couple of plates of dinner leftovers for Dean and Sam. Dean soon gathered that Richard was one of the founders of this settlement, a decade ago.

“So you saw all this comin’, huh?” Dean asked conversationally.

“The apocalypse? Sure. The signs have been pretty obvious for a while now.”

Dean chuckled under his breath. Most civilians didn’t come straight out and call it that. Actually, up until a few weeks ago, most civilians probably had no idea what was coming, despite, as Chuck pointed out, the Bible promising all this and worse. 

He stopped chuckling when Richard said, “Donna and Jody tell me you and your brother fought God, trying to save us. I wanted to thank you for your efforts.”

Dean froze.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Richard said calmly, seeing his reaction. “I’m ... one of the initiated, I guess you could say. I had loved ones come back too when ... when Jody got her son back ... temporarily.”

Dean nodded. “I’m sorry. I know how rough it is to lose someone, and then to have to lose ’em all over again.” Mom and Dad, just for starters.

“Well, to everything there is a season,” he said with a shrug.

Dean eyed him. “Wish I could feel so relaxed about everything that’s going on out there. Saving people’s what we do, me and Sam. I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not doing that.”

Seeming to decide Dean wanted to talk a while, Richard got out a bottle of whiskey. Dean eyed the bottle closely, hoping against hope somehow they were able to manufacture that up here, too, but then he saw the label. Damnit, no whiskey anymore, either. Once the last few bottles were gone, anyway. Dean felt honored to get to share some of the last of it.

“This is my own special brew,” Richard began, and Dean perked right up again.

“Oh, uh ... is that so?” Dean asked, scarcely able to believe it. He sniffed at the glass Richard gave him. Smelled good and strong. He tasted it. “Oh, yeah,” he gasped. “That’s the good stuff.”

Richard beamed, seeing they had even more in common. “I’ve been practicing for a few years. I’m pretty happy with my recipe now. Been saving every glass bottle I can get my hands on so I have somewhere to store it,” he said, waggling the bottle at him before putting it away. They sat down on some comfy couches in the livingroom. “But most of it’s in barrels out in the barn.”

BARRELS OF WHISKEY?? Dean tried to play it cool, but some strong whiskey was exactly what he needed right now. A few swallows and suddenly Richard seemed like an old friend. 

“I am trying to be philosophical about everything that’s going on out there,” Richard admitted. “I have a lot of practice. I’ve lost many, in my time. Your brother says he thinks we’ve got a thousand more years, though, so that’s good.”

“Could be better,” Dean mumbled.

“Could it? We were so close to annihilating ourselves with nuclear war or global warming. A thousand years seems like a gift.”

“Yeah, I guess if there ain’t no gas, there ain’t gonna be no more global warming, either.”

Richard chuckled appreciatively. “That’s the right approach,” he said, holding up his glass. “Glass half full.”

“I just really don’t know what I’m good for if I’m not out there saving the world, you know?”

Richard quirked his head, as if thrown off by this statement. “You save the world by helping the person next to you,” he said, like it was obvious.

“You save the world by not letting it end.”

“Well, nothing’s written in stone. But I’ve never been one for this whole idea of finding some unfortunate somewhere and handing them charity. All of us are unfortunate, in some ways, sometimes. Humanity is a web. I have the people I know, you have the people you know, and now that you and I know each other, the people I know are connected to the people you know, through us. We can’t know what someone far away needs, but we do know what the people we know and love need, and if we give it to them, and they help us when we need it--if the web is strong--everybody gets the help they need. That’s how the world is saved. That’s why I asked everyone to invite friends and family to come up here and join us. I guess you and your brother have the inside scoop on why all this happened, but the way I see it is, the web got weak. People didn’t know their neighbors, they abandoned their families, their brothers and sisters, they let friendships go like it was nothing. They forgot how to say ‘I’m sorry,’ forgot how to make things right. So it doesn’t surprise me that God is pissed. But if we make the web strong again, maybe ... he’ll give us an extension.” 

Dean thought back on that last lecture from Chuck. Honestly ... it sounded like something Chuck would do. “Yeah,” he said, letting the heat of the whiskey fill him, sinking into the blessed comfort of the couch. “Maybe so.”

“Sounds like ... you and your brother haven’t really let yourselves be part of that web for a long time. Maybe the time has finally come.”

Dean smiled wistfully. To get to have friends. People to lean on. People to love and be loved by. It really would be heaven on Earth.

Richard set down his glass with a heavy sigh. “I’m glad we were able to save you and your brother, and I’m also glad some more guys who know their way around a gun are here, because we haven’t had much trouble with bandits--too far off the beaten path--but Julie and Sherie were out on horseback today moving the sheep to another pasture and they found a car at the church, could be trouble--”

Dean leapt up. “Was it black? Old? Just about the prettiest car you’ve ever seen?”

Richard looked up at him, bewildered, but undeniably amused. “Uh ... they said it was definitely black.”

“It’s mine,” Dean said. “She’s mine. That’s my Baby. That’s where we ran out of gas. In fact, I was hoping you’d let me hook up some horses to ’er and haul ’er up here ....”

Richard laughed. He seemed so relieved it wasn’t bandits. “We’re saving all the gas we’ve been hoarding for the tractors, at least through the rest of the season, hoping the engineers among us might be able to rig up some kind of solar electric power so we don’t all have to plow the fields by hand after it’s all gone, but ... if she’s that important to you, you can have enough gas to at least get her to the settlement.”

“Oh, God, yes, thank you,” Dean said, grabbing his hand and shaking it hard. He really did know what Dean truly needed. “I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me. Everyone here helps whenever someone needs it. That’s how it works.” He smiled.

Dean didn’t quite know how to react. He was always the one helping. It felt weird to be the one being helped, but everything else had changed. It seemed like that was changing, too.

The next morning, after breakfast (pancakes!), Dean and Sam were saddling up to retrieve Baby with Richard, Claire, and Donna, when a woman named Linda came running up. “My family, they’re here--they made it here! But they’re at the end of the road, and they’re out of gas! My mom’s in a wheelchair, and my aunt is sick and can’t walk!”

Dean was glad Richard was the guy in charge, seeing how calm he was at the news. Taking the time to consider the best course of action instead of responding with panic and maybe making some costly mistakes, he ruminated for about half a minute before asking the woman to ask someone else there to saddle up some more horses, then get Jody to lead the rescue expedition.

“Thing is,” Richard said, eyeing their little group already on horseback, “it sounds like we need as many strong guys as we can get, and we’re a little short on ’em.”

“Yep, first things first,” Dean said, even though it tore at him a tiny bit, to put off saving Baby. “We gotta save the people before we save the car.”

Richard smiled. “Great. I guess that’s our new mission, then. In that case, Linda, just grab a horse yourself and catch up to us as soon as you can. I’m sure your family will feel much better to see your face. That’ll do more for them than anything the strongest guys here can accomplish.”

She showed them where her family was on the GPS, and they headed out. In the bright morning sunlight, Sam looked ashen--he still wasn’t in any condition to be doing anything strenuous. Neither was Dean. Yet there was also a light in Sam’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. He’d seemed at loose ends since they arrived, and bored without his usual occupations of reading and research and hunting (although they’d just been introduced that morning to a guy who brought all his books with him, who said Sam could borrow anything he wanted any time), as if, like Dean, he felt useless; but with some people to save ... Sam looked like his heart was lightening right along with Dean’s.

They dropped behind the group. Dean addressed Sam in a low voice: “So if we’re not supposed to help people anymore ... is the fact that we’re here gonna make this all go sideways?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” said Sam. “But I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking a lot about what Chuck said, and he only said our time for fighting is over. We’re just not supposed to interfere in his plans or in how things would otherwise have gone, I guess, so I don’t think this counts. I hope not.”

Dean nodded. Linda caught up to them then, and they picked up the pace. What would have been a wretched stretch to traverse on foot was easy on horseback. Richard put the gas they’d brought along for Baby in Linda’s family’s car when they arrived, and they simply drove it back to the settlement, over gently rolling prairie. Once there, Dean helped her mom out of the car into her wheelchair while Sam carried her aunt to a free cabin. 

The mom clung to Dean, weeping and thanking him, over and over. He fully understood why she was so bent out of shape, having just made that harrowing journey to get here himself, and he was as eager to put her at ease as the people here had been to do for him. “Ma’am, this is nothing,” he assured her. Even in Sam's weakened condition, Dean could tell carrying her tiny aunt was nothing for him, either. “I’m just happy to help. Seriously, thank you for making me feel useful.”

After making sure they had something to eat and getting them safely ensconced in their new cabin to rest after their trip, Richard found Dean and asked him if he was still up for getting the Impala today. He didn’t need to be asked twice, turning and heading directly for the stables. They passed Linda’s family’s car on the way there. “We’re loading up the property with cars that’re already junk if there's no gas anymore,” Dean remarked, before realizing Richard was smiling at the sight.

“Oh, nothing’s junk,” Richard said. “We just went from a disposable economy to one where everything manmade is going to be precious. Mark my words, people will be scouring the dumps for plastics, metals, tools ... everything. And cars? All that steel? I’ll take every one we can get. God only knows what great stuff we might be able to make from the scrap.”

Dean leaped back as if struck. “You’re not doing that to my Baby!”

Richard laughed. “Except your Baby.”

“You look good up there, Dean Winchester,” Jody said with a grin as the bay Dean was riding skittered a little sideways. 

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” he returned as she mounted her own horse.

Sam rode up on his ginormous horse, but as weird as he looked that high off the ground, it was less weird than seeing his feet practically dragging on the ground when he rode one of the normal-sized ponies. It had been years now since Dean thought this, years since they arrived at this place and started thinking of it as home, years since Sam had always been withdrawn, serious, the weight of the world on his shoulders, but it recurred to Dean now as he saw the relaxed grin on Sam’s face as he settled his hat more securely on his head: how strange and wonderful it was to see Sam so ... happy. Dean had always wanted to be a cowboy. Turned out, deep down, so did Sam.

“I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride,” Dean sang. He was surprised to hear Sam start the final verse, with his own modification: “I ride these plains, a loaded six-string on my back.”

A couple more of their new friends joined them on their horses, finally Donna, trotting up and not wanting to be left out, sang out of place, “I ride all night just to get back home.”

“It’s actually ‘drive,’” Richard corrected her nicely as they started heading out for some recon as they drove the cows to another area. Dean nodded at Richard, who nodded back: a love of good music was yet another thing they had in common.

“Well, not anymore it isn’t,” she retorted. “Now it’s a flesh-and-blood horse, and the only thing any of us ‘drives’ is a tractor.”

“Whatever; just so long as I have some transportation and Baby’s safe,” Dean said as the horses picked up speed. Baby hadn’t driven anywhere in a few years, but she remained just out back of his and Sam’s cabin, right where she belonged. Well, she deserved a rest, too.

It had also been a long time since Dean had dwelled on Chuck and having lost that final, fateful battle. Now, though, it occurred to him to wonder. Stuff had come out, of them and Jody and Donna, over the years, until their new community knew rather a lot about Sam and Dean and all they’d done in their lives, which led to an open respect for them that still made Dean and Sam uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of. So Dean could wonder aloud now to Sam, in the hearing of the rest, “What kind of ‘punishment’ is this? If Chuck thought he was making us miserable by driving us out here to live like this, he sure struck out.”

Sam looked equally baffled ... and no more inclined than Dean to dwell on it overmuch.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jody said cheerfully. The grass was so green at this time of year. It seemed like you could ride over these beautiful rolling hills forever. “All he said was that he’d give you the ‘ending you deserve.’ This seems about right.”

~ The End ~

**Author's Note:**

> I had the opportunity for Summergen this year to write a fic that was my vision for the end of the show. It seemed from the comments there like this is not the way most people want it to end, which baffles me; I can't imagine wanting there never to be any "peace when they are done," after all the fighting and suffering our boys have been through--but there were a few others in the comments who seemed to like this version of an end for them. However SPN really ends for Sam and Dean, I'm glad I got the chance to write my ideal vision for them. I so strongly feel they deserve all the happiness and peace after everything they've done for so many people, and to get to love and be loved.


End file.
